Anne-Marie Duff

Were these... So they were quite often about Victorian girls and, you know, there would be ghosts.

Yeah, lots of dialogue.

Yeah, casting myself in the lead role without even knowing it then.

Probably more death and despair, thinking of the age that I was.

I think because I'd been so...

My tunnel vision had meant that I wasn't... I had this fear that if I don't focus on my dream the whole time, it will disappear.

Coming from this very working-class background, it was a big leap to go, I'm going to... Because I was reading books about the Royal Court in the 60s and about Eleanor Aduza, and that... God, you were really... I was a weirdo.

I was a real weirdo.

And so I wasn't having a teenage experience, so in lots of ways I stayed young.

Yeah.

Yes, that's right, and Christopher Fettis.

Yeah.

The Drama Centre.

Yes, because it sort of defined itself as a conservatoire, and there was Stanislavski training, and we also had method classes, and it was very, very strict.

I think I probably still am, Giles, you know.

Well, it would have probably been around the fact that life wasn't easy for us.

We couldn't always pay the bills.

There was complicated family issues, not in immediate family, but surrounding, and probably it was to do with leaving where I was and knowing that

the need to do that was profound and that I would have to work very hard to get it.

Well, sometimes I think you feel that it could all vanish.